


Spectrum

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf



Category: Primeval
Genre: I Don't Even Know, Psychic Abilities, Supernatural Elements, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 17:37:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12753012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf
Summary: Everyone had a colour. It was like an invisible halo of colour surrounding a person, bleeding out of their skin. He could see it when nobody else could, and that colour told him more about a person than anything else.





	1. Seeing the Spectrum

Connor Temple was a superhero. Maybe not in the terms of having X-ray vision, super strength, or flight. No, he wasn't anything like that, not one to be found in the comic books. His superpower was all his own. He didn't realise that normal people didn't experience things the way he did until he was seven years old. Until then, he'd always thought that everyone saw the halo of colours around other people, that everybody could taste things doing maths and heard machines sing when they started running, that it was nothing extraordinary, nothing uncommon. It wasn't until he was seven and refused to go to class in primary that he realised just how uncommon he was. He had refused to go to class because his grammar teacher was, as he stubbornly insisted, 'too grey.' He couldn't stand to see it. It'd drive him crackers, and then he'd end up having strange little fits.

His mum had taken him to a doctor after the headmistress called home out of concern. After a series of irritating tests that'd pushed the limits of his childish patience, the doctor was able to put a name to his condition: synaesthesia. The official diagnosis of it consisted of a lot of big, long words he didn't like to ear because they were far too bleak and grey, but Mum had explained it to him much better. Part of his brain was cross-wired. His senses were linked up to each other in ways nobody else experienced.

When he did science, he could hear music, specific pieces of music. Chemistry was Bach, but biology was Mozart. Doing maths, however, that made him taste things, usually breakfast things, like eggs and toast and hash and orange juice. And technology sang to him. Some machines, cars and planes and ships and even guns, they became a little  _more_ than machines the older they got, gained personality of their own. He could hear their song, the heavy clatter of gears clanking, the high counterpoint of electricity in wires, the percussion of pumps working, all of it mingling together in a song all its own. He had an eidetic memory, sometimes mistakenly called a photographic memory. He remembered things with clarity, but not as a fresco, mere images painted on the wall, but also with sound and texture and smell. It was important to him. People thought it was weird, but it was instinctive and habitual to sniff something new, even taste it, provided it wasn't something nasty. Or another person. But with it came a whole a new problem: sensory overload. If he became overwhelmed, if there was too much, then he would get twitchy, or he couldn't stand to be touched, or he would just shut down entirely, withdraw into himself. He refused to go to a psychiatrist (he wasn't mad) but his mum was a much better therapist than any shrink out there.

That wasn't the only thing, though. There were the colours, too.

Everyone had a colour. It was like an invisible halo of colour surrounding a person, bleeding out of their skin. He could see it when nobody else could, and that colour told him more about a person than anything else. He knew that seeing the colours wasn't really synaesthesia, that it was really a peculiarity unique to him and him alone, so he always kept it to himself. Nobody was ever just one colour. There were many, ones that came and went and changed with moods and thoughts, but there was always one base colour, one that dominated. Connor would call it an aura, if he believed in that sort of thing. It was really the only term that properly described it.

People had the strangest ideas about colour. They didn't seem to understand that there was no such thing as  _just_ when it came to a colour. There was no such thing as  _just_ a colour. Like...red. There was no such thing as  _just_ red. There was cherry, crimson, fresh blood, scarlet, burgundy, ruby, cerise, salmon, garnet, claret, dragon's blood, maroon, watermelon, cranberry, rose, the list went on and on. And just like  _red,_ there was no such thing as  _blue._ There was no such thing as  _just blue_ , either. Connor found that he hated words like 'blue' and 'red,' hated how they were so...plain. There was cerulean, azure, cornflower, sapphire, cobalt, navy, indigo, peacock, steel, ice, lapis lazuli, but there was no  _just blue._

By the time he went to college at Central Metropolitan University with full scholarship, Connor was able to control all of his unusual senses, able to filter so he wasn't constantly overwhelmed. He never told anybody about it, either. He kept it his own little secret and allowed other people to think that he was some kind of freak whenever he hummed along with the song of machinery or absently noted the taste of eggs in maths hall. Not even Tom and Duncan ever knew. He didn't know why he didn't like telling people. Maybe it was because when he was seven, he liked to think he was some kind of superhero with his own special powers, and he had to keep them a secret from the rest of the world so his archenemy didn't discover his true identity.

Not even when he became part of the anomaly project did he reveal his synaesthesia. Just like everyone else, Stephen and Abby and Cutter thought he was odd, and he let them think that. It didn't matter how they saw him because he knew what he really was. Connor Temple was a superhero with his own super-senses.


	2. Prussian Blue

Stephen James Hart is the most blue person that Connor has ever seen.

Most people have streaks of blue, perhaps some larger patches or bright flecks, but not Stephen. His entire base colour is a lovely deep, strong Prussian blue, chased with sparks of silver, cool and calm and unruffled. His colours always hold close to him, drawing near to his skin like a cloak. They don't bleed outward to mingle with other people's, merely cling close to his body. Usually there's curls and trickles of other colours, butter yellow and Kelly green and salmon pink, but they are always hidden away deep in the hues, like Stephen's ashamed to show any sort of emotion in front of other people.

And whenever he's around Cutter, well, then his colours get  _really_ weird. Connor doesn't notice it at first, simply because he isn't looking. Whenever he's around the professor, down in the depths of all that deep Prussian blue, there's a part of him that wrinkles and darkens to shades of burnt sienna and sour yellows and crystalline claret. It's all the signs that he's keeping some secret, something dark and hurtful to both of them, and it hurts him to keep it to himself yet cannot stand to let it show. It isn't until later that Connor realises all those muddled, jagged colours are the secret of Helen and their affair.

After that, the sienna, claret, and sour yellow don't appear, but they are replaced by something more painful. Crimson is a colour of pain. Connor knows that, he's seen it before. People that have been seriously hurt, physical or emotional, their colours are swarmed by terrible washes of crimson. And whenever Cutter or Abby or whoever gives him that hateful look, the one they've been bending on him since they found out about the affair, Stephen acts like it doesn't matter, seems to let it just roll off his back. Only Connor can see the proof otherwise, the gouges of crimson ripped into the tracker's cool Prussian layers like the lashes of a whip. The bright silver sparks that had always chase through like stars grow dull and morose, dark flecks of bleak grey, and his colours draw even close, like they're trying to protect him. The bright, happy colours don't appear but for once in a blue moon, it seems. The Prussian blue is no longer cool and unruffled, but rather streaky and mottled, turning darker with his misery, regret, and self-loathing.

Connor aches to see it.


	3. Ruby Red

All colours have more than one meaning to them. Crimson is pain, but scarlet is anger. Every nuance of shade has a different purpose, a different message. Connor knows more about the difference in colour than probably any artist in the world.

And ruby is definitely not so good. Brighter than crimson, darker than scarlet. Ruby is the colour of hatred, of unhindered spite, but sometimes it also the colour of lust. Not love, which is a soft, warm garnet, but lust, a raw hunger that borders on cruelty. Like the gem it is named for, it is hard and sharp and crystalline, never soft, never gentle, and Helen is the most ruby person he'd ever seen, to the extent of there being almost no other colour in her at all, just an endless, dangerously glittering ruby, bathed in frozen fire. When Connor first sees her, there's this thick matte of murky brown-grey over her colours, pulled in close and tight to her skin, which means she is trying hard to hide herself, appear like something she isn't, but the ruby is still there, close to her skin, hissing and spitting under the grey. It makes her look as though she's on fire, and it terrifies him. It's only worse when she drops the oh-so-helpful act and shrugs off the dark colours like a snake shedding her skin. Then she's wreathed in crystalline hellfire, laced by thick oil black.

Whenever she meets up with Stephen, the ruby burns brighter, sharp bladed fingers creeping out to dig into his colours, trying to drag him to her even as he struggles to get away. Even now, there is a scar in Stephen's colours, a gash of ruby in his Prussian blue like a battle scar, a wound that doesn't heal. Connor does his best to stay as far away from her as possible, afraid of that jagged-edged gemstone, afraid of the oily black that oozes through the cracks like tar or motor oil, because he knows that kind of black is madness, insanity, death. He's afraid that if it touches him, the stain will never come out.

Even more baffling, though, is when Helen is around Cutter. The ruby burns bright there, too, but other colours unfurl as well, cobwebby little strands of garnet and pale indigo, though they are always cut to ribbons on her edges, strangled out and constricted away. For as much as she loathes him, a part of her still wants him, loves him. Her colour has scarred the professor as well, left another terrible battle wound close to his heart.

Connor is afraid of her.


	4. Indigo

Connor himself is indigo.

A deep, dark blue-purple mix like the night sky without the stars. There are some patches of lighter colour, of midnight blue and African violet, but there are also spots of black, different from Helen's. This is not crazy oil-black. This is obsidian black, desolation and loneliness, only throwing light back. Sometimes the obsidian is harder to see, sometimes it disappears almost entirely, but there is always a little fleck of it here and there. He does his best to ignore them. When he's happy, though, like when the ADD sings perfect harmony to him, or when he  _finally_ gets his bloody prototypes to work, then swirls of buttery yellow and quicksilver swirl all through his colours, which brighten and turn curly in turn. He giggles a little, because then he looks like Van Gogh's  _Starry Night._ Connor Temple, the human painting.

He likes his colours. He thinks they're pretty, in a way. Sometimes, if things go particularly well for him, then bright flecks of silver appear in his colours like someone's flicked mercury all over the indigo, and in his midnight blues and African violets, they look like stars. Whenever he sees someone that's an ugly orange or murky brown, then he can't help but pride himself a little on his own colours, on the knowledge that on most days, he looks like a night sky full of stars. Yes, Connor is indigo, but that is not a bad thing. It is a dark colour, sure, but it is not negative.

Until, of course, it is. Sometimes, indigo is not a night sky, it is the colour of a bruise, throbbing and dully aching. When Tom dies, killed by the parasite that turn his colours to a twisted pained mass of crimson, oil black, Dijon yellow, and seething scarlet, then his indigo turns so dark it is hard to tell where one colour ends and another begins, like staring down into a well full of dark waters. He looks in the mirror and sees his obsidian has returned, shiny and dark in his colours like hard knots. It is many weeks before the obsidian goes away again, before he's no longer a bruise or a dark well and is once more  _Starry Night,_ the human painting.

The one bright part of him, though, is on his chest, conspicuously close to his heart. There, it is a riot of colours, holding a little bit of everybody else's colour in him, Stephen and Abby and Cutter and Jenny and yes, even Lester. All their hues lay close to him, and his indigos wrap around them, draw them in close and shelter them. He never sees his indigo in them, though. It doesn't surprise him too much. He's used to that.

Connor still carries them with him.


	5. Maroon

Professor Nick Cutter embodies his colour almost as much as Stephen does his.

Cutter is maroon, a deep, vibrant purplish-red like aged wine: warm and rich and strong but not too sweet. His colours are infectious, too. It is an unconscious charisma he has, this way of drawing people in close to him, maroon reaching out and gently curling around other colours, coaxing them in. He doesn't even realise the gravitational effect he has on others, as he cannot see the maroon that spreads and flows out form him in spirals and curls.

And like the man himself, the shades can be just as unpredictable and wild as Cutter at times. There are days when he will be sitting down, calm, maroon laced with calm sapphire and peaceful butterscotch, tinged with relaxed mossy green, colours rolling in gentle waves. And then he is on his feet, pacing and yammering, peaceful hues replaced with brilliant flares of amethyst and ochre, curling in excited spirals. Connor thinks he can make a study of merely watching the professor's kaleidoscope colours flicker and shift. He also finds the unpredictability of them familiar, comforting, something steady and strong to lean on, just like Cutter is.

When the affair comes out, the span of colour almost makes Connor sick. He sees the hurt, disbelief, anger, betrayal, mistrust, loathing, and sorrow flash across the professor so quickly, flicking from crimson to neon to scarlet to cobalt to burnt ochre to acidic green to navy in a dizzying phantasmagoria. And now, whenever he looks at Stephen, his maroon is tainted with crimson, edges growing spiny and sharp, no longer coaxing and enticing. But there is also an edge of turquoise and cranberry, twisted in lonely knots, regret and longing for things to be different. Still, the strong, bitter violet of his stubborn pride refuses to bend, blanketing and stifling other colours.

God, sometimes Connor wishes he could just grab them both and  _shake_ some sense into them. Stephen longs to fix things; they might never be the same, but they could be better. He aches for it, wanting the professor to understand, but he is afraid of Cutter's jagged crimson anger, shying away to brew in his own misery and accepting his exile in forlorn resignation. Cutter wants things to change, but his violet pride will not give, keeping the bottle green of past friendship from reaching out to familiar Prussian shades.

Connor will never understand these two.


	6. Emerald

Abby is emerald, the deepest, brightest, most brilliant shade of green that he has ever seen in his entire life.

She is emerald, and it is so damnably beautiful that it takes his breath away at times. She is emerald, but without the sharp, faceted hardness of a true gemstone, not like Helen's frozen ruby. This is rich and deep and soft, like a pile of crushed velvet drapery, something almost tangible. Sometimes he finds himself staring at her with something akin to awed adoration, simply to watch all the shifting, beautiful shades of emerald that flow and ripple around her. He has to try not to, though, lest she think that he's some kind of freak or a pervert, staring after her all the time. She won't understand if he tells her the truth. How could she?  _Excuse me for staring, Ab, it's just that you have the most beautiful colour I've ever seen, the kind of emerald green that doesn't really have words, and hey, did you know that parts of your colours are near the same colour as Rex?_ Yeah, that one will go over like a tonne of bloody bricks.

Parts of her  _are_ the same shade of not-envy-green as Rex, though, a fact that tickles him every time. Still, he takes care not to stare at her too much, settling for watching her colours when she isn't paying a lick of attention to him. Which is...most of the time, actually. So it turns out all right. She is emerald, so lovely and beautiful, and yet over it all, there is something else, a hard, spiny shell of mahogany and bronzy-orange, a defencive shield wrapped all about herself like thorny armour. It keeps other colours from mingling with her past the surface, protects the depths of warm, tender emerald underneath.

It puzzles him at first, until he is around her longer. The colours of a person become easier to read the longer he's near them. Like learning the tones and expressions of a close friend, they clear up and easier for him to read. First impressions only give him base colours, perhaps a few strong emotions. The spiny mahogany-bronze shell is all he sees at first, little glimpses of emerald visible through the gaps. But the depths of her slowly become visible. Down in the depths of her emerald is a deep crimson scar, surrounded by hues of navy and plum and fire yellow, and it is from here that her hard, spiny shell comes from, the source of her armour.  
Something or someone has hurt her very badly, leaving that old pain buried down deep inside. He doesn't know what it is that haunts her still, but it makes him feel terrible streaky to see it. So he tries to earn her trust, her respect, and maybe one day, God forbid, her affection. It might take months, years even, for her to trust him enough to tell him what hurts her so much, but he is patient. He will do what he must and will wait forever and a day if it means being able to remove that crimson thorn stuck in her colours.

Connor only wishes she'd let him in.


	7. Violet

Lester is the violet man.

He bleeds a vibrant shade of royal violet, so deep it is sometimes tinged in blue like mountain columbines, so sharp and bright and dazzling that Connor has a hard time looking directly at it for very long. People think that he's meek, afraid of the suited man. Actually, he's trying to spare himself a headache. It is the colour of confidence and self-assurance, a secure-in-his-own-skin kind of hue, nothing like Connor's dark African wood violets, uncertain and hesitant. And edging all that violet is a sharp, crystalline edge of pale icy blue, an intelligent practicality so ruthless as to rival any bird of prey's. James Lester is not a man to be idly trifled with.

But that is not there all is to him. Lester is the violet man, but he is also softer than anyone truly realises. Nestled down deep in his colours, over his heart, is a patch that is as much a riot of different colour as Connor's is: pale watermelon, new cornflower, warm cerise, and smoky asteria, all wreathed in the soft, warm garnet tendrils of deep-rooted love and affection. These are the base colours of his wife and his three children, Connor knows instinctually. Not many people know that Lester has a family, but Connor does. Not because he hacked his personnel file (well, not  _only)_ but because he can see them right there, cradled in the man's colours, sheltered protectively by violet teeth.

And he cares for the team, this violet man, though he pretends that he could do without them on any given day. When Cutter has to be pulled out of the claws and teeth of some predator, when Abby comes in morose and sad-eyed for a killed creature, when Stephen limps in bloodied and bruised, then worried hues of tawny golden-brown and concerned dove greys blossom across his base colour, hiding behind sharp icy edges. When soldiers are killed in the line of duty, sorrowful navy wrinkles appear next to long spirals of sympathetic rose.

Lester will have Connor shot and his body disposed of discreetly should he ever insinuate that the suited man cares anything about anybody, but Connor knows better than to say anything. He is comforted by the knowledge that they have the violet man to protect them, always keeping an eye out, his violet spreading out like a protective umbrella. He feels a little safer when he sees that flicker of royal columbine out the corner of his eye. Lester can act cold and aloof and pewter all he wants to.

Connor knows the truth.


	8. Amber

Not once in his life as Connor ever seen anyone quite so amber as Claudia Brown.

He would say that her colour is the same as her name, but it isn't quite. There is a difference between brown and amber. Amber is the colour of fossilized tree sap held up to the sunlight, darker and richer than honey, yet not as deep as true gold. It is a beautiful colour, one he so rarely sees, and it is a good colour, the base colour of someone gentle and kind and warm. Connor tries not to judge people by their base colours, but damned if its not the most effective and accurate judge of character he's ever had.

She  _does_ have some brown in her colours, though not the awful murky sort. Hers are flecks of glowing auburn, streaks of polished russet, rippling through the amber like the soft undulations of wood grain. The first time he sees her, his first thought is of the first Jurassic Park film, of the globe of amber with the mosquito inside it, on the end of John Hammond's cane.  _That_ is her base colour, and even though he accuses her of a government cover-ups and such, he knows that nobody so warmly amber could be that bad. That would be like saying the Easter Bunny is a criminal mastermind plotting world domination.

It isn't just the warmth of her amber that appeals her to Connor, though. It is the effect her amber has on other people. When he first meets Cutter, the shadow of Helen's ruby still haunts him, the frozen wound still raw, maroon dull and pale, lifeless. Connor almost pities him, the poor thing. But when they discover Claudia Brown, her amber is like a shot of adrenaline in a still heart. Connor actually does a bit of a double-take, not certain if this is the same professor. She makes his maroon flare back to life, makes that ruby gash begin to fade, at least a little bit, and when they stand close, their colours twist and twine together in a magenta blush of mutual attraction, throwing of bright sparks. Connor is grateful for Claudia Brown then, for her ability to make the professor as vibrant as he is supposed to be. Her amber  _does_ harden sometimes, showing her hidden flashes of scarlet and steel-blue, but then Cutter will give her that hurt, confused look, and her colours go soft once more, reaching out to him.

But Helen and her frozen fire ruby appears. The Future Predators that make everyone's colours pale with fear attack. The anomaly in the Forest of Dean happens. Cutter comes back through the anomaly with crimson almost drowning his maroon, asking for a woman none of them know about. Connor is the only person that believes him, but for a different reason than he tells the professor.

Connor still sees an echo of amber in Cutter's colours.


	9. Lavender

Jenny is an echo of Lester. Not that striking blue-tinged columbine violet, but rather a satiny lavender hue, like the thin clouds at dawn, just before the sun rises, pale and beautiful.

She carries that same hard edge, though, though hers is steel blue rather than ice. Very similar but not the same. She isn't one to be trifled with either, that Connor knows for fact, because he sees how quickly her soft lavender can grow sharp and spiny, steel edges snapping. He isn't afraid of her, per se, but he knows not to tread on her toes. He doesn't want to find out how indigo holds up to lavender.

There's also zigzags of wily daisy yellow in her colours, spirals of sly bubblegum pink that dance through the lavender. When she spins some clever, ingenious spiel to hapless witnesses, Connor can watch as daisy gently slides into the other person's colours, bubblegum sticking to disbelief and blotting it out, coaxing and soothing, reassuring them that no, they did not see what they think they saw, it was an escaped exotic pet from a private zoo, there are experts handling it now, would they please step this way? He appreciates her more than anything, sometimes, knowing how dangerous their job can be for unsuspecting people.

Cutter can make her turn scarlet faster than anybody else. It's almost a magic trick. Sometimes he doesn't even  _say_ anything, merely looks at her, and Connor sees a scarlet flush rise up in satiny lavender folds. With everyone else,  _anyone_ else, she is a wellspring of jade patience and relaxed gold, but one sideways look from the professor, and she's flaring up like bloody magnesium. Connor finds it hilarious, especially when she vents on him and Cutter only gapes, turning straw yellow and pale tan in confusion, baffled as to what he did wrong. It is his own private amusement, the Jenny and Cutter show, episodes daily. People sometimes think he's a wee bit mad when he starts giggling over something they can't see.

But Cutter doesn't just make her turn scarlet. Sometimes her steely edges soften away just as his own spiny crimson ones do, lavender and maroon tentatively interacting with each other, mingling almost shyly. And then Connor sees a flush of pale fuchsia swell up in both of them, hesitant curls of butter and fern appearing in them. He doesn't say anything about it. It isn't his place, and it has always been his unspoken rule that what the colours tell him is a secret between him and the colours. But he notices that a tiny spot of maroon has taken up residence in Jenny's colours, suspiciously close to her heart, and that Cutter bears a little fleck of lavender in himself as well, and it makes him smile.

Connor just hopes the mysterious ghost-echo of amber won't get in the way.


End file.
